but don't you think we came close
by theyellowumbrella
Summary: It's going well until she takes a proper look at him and realises that she could be with anyone she wants to and that person is Jim Halpert. (pam/ryan au)


**The ending drags on a bit, but I wanted to hit 3k words and give Ryan a happy ending. I ship Jam and I love Jim, don't get me wrong, but I like this a lot (also, I tried to redeem Jim for all of the shit he did, but it didn't work. For the sake of the story, Jim is basically Roy). Enjoy! (Ryan is purposefully ooc and I made a mess of Jim).**

* * *

On his first day, they hardly make any interaction. She takes his coat from him and shows him around the office, but any talking that the two do that day is over by 9:15. For the rest of the day, Ryan has to stick with stolen glances as she doodles in her notebook and answers the phones. He's almost caught too many times, so after Dwight has to tell him to get back to work in a sharp voice for the seventh time, he decides that staring at an engaged receptionist all day is a lost cause. He throws himself into his work after that, something he hardly ever does. He works all through the day, not sparing Pam any looks, instead copying down figures that mean nothing to him and writing down information without a look back.

He thinks about her, though. That sounds lame and corny, he knows, but it's true. He sometimes finds himself thinking about her when he's stuck in one of Michael's meetings and she's sitting beside Jim. Occasionally, he'll work up the nerve to slump into the seat next to her, but not often enough that it's obvious that he likes her. One day as he's getting dressed in the morning, he remembers that she told him that blue was his colour sometime during his first week, and even though she was probably just being nice, he decides to ditch the red tie that's hanging around his neck and make the extra trip down to the dry cleaners to pick up his only blue tie (how much can an extra ten minutes hurt anyway, right?).

"Temp?" Michael says, exiting his office. Ryan doesn't comment on the fact that even though he's been there a good three months, Michael still hasn't bothered to learn his name.

"Yes, Michael?"

"Where are those expense reports that I asked you to fill out yesterday? Jan needs them."

Ryan's surprised at how... normal Michael's acting, but he decides not to question it and rifles around in his desk drawer to find the paperwork. "Uh, here they are." He hands them to Michael and flashes him a smile, hoping he's making a good impression.

The phone rings, interrupting the almost silence in the office. "Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam... yes, hi, that's me... he has? That's certainly a surprise... I can put you through to him, if you want... ah, that's very nice of you, thank you... okay, yep, here he is. Ryan, your mom's on line one."

Pam puts Ryan's mother through, smiling at him uncertainly. "Hi, mom... yes, that was her... yes, she is nice... I'm at work, mom... was there something you needed?... you can't just call me at work... mom, come on... I'm supposed to be reviewing last year's sales... no, I still haven't made a sale... no, your son isn't a failure! That's harsh... mom, I gotta go... yes, I'll tell her you said hi."

And that's how most days go from there on out. Mrs. Howard will call in and her and Pam will talk and then her and Ryan will talk for a while. Not that she'll admit it, but talking to Ryan's mom had quickly become Pam's favourite part of the day. It's usually filled with dull conversation with Roy and pranking with Jim, which don't get her wrong, is fun, but it gets old after a while, and refilling the candy dispenser on her desk, but learning about her new... co-worker? acquaintance? friend? and when he was younger is fun.

.

This is it. This is the day that he'll finally have the balls to ask Pam out. Her and Roy split up at least a year ago, and he knows that she's been on dates since then, so why shouldn't he be able to? He gets into work at least thirty minutes earlier than usual, because he knows that's when she always arrives. He's wearing his best white shirt and only blue tie and he spent twenty minutes on his hair, making sure it's just perfect. "Hey, Ryan," she greets him as they're walking in together.

"Hi, Pam." He's visibly more nervous than usual. He's sweating and his heart is beating faster—you know, in the way that makes it sound like you've been running for a really long time—and when he talks he trips over his words.

"How are you? How was your night? Do anyone f-fun? I mean, anything! Do anything fun?"

Pam laughs and smiles at her friend (yes, they'd come to the mutual agreement that they were best friends. Okay, maybe she'd only said friends, but it was like they were best friends). "Are you okay? You're acting weird."

"You're acting weird!"

He runs off without her, panicking not-so-subtly. Ryan makes it inside the building first, which isn't a surprise considering he bolted from the parking lot at thirteen miles per hour (Angela had gotten a speed counter thing installed in the car parked and that was the number that was printed across it in large green numbers. He has time to calm down and unpack all of his things before she arrives inside the office.

For the rest of the day, instead of working, Ryan works on his game plan. By four, he's decided on exactly what he's going to do. He picks up the phone that's been untouched for the last few days and dials the office. Pam picks up maybe fifteen seconds later with her signature, "Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam."

"Dunder Mifflin, this is Ryan."

Pam smiles at Ryan and says, "Hey."

"Hi."

"Couldn't make the tedious trip from your desk all the way over to mine?"

"Nope." He almost forgets what he's calling to do until she grins at him. "I'm actually calling to see if you could go down to the warehouse for me. We need a couple more boxes of paper and I've gotta finish off this rundown."

Pam hesitates, but eventually nods and says, "Yeah, okay."

She gets up from her desk and makes her way down to the warehouse, humming a song that Ryan had made her listen to the day before. "Pam, there you are," one of the warehouse guys—she wants to say Joe—says, pulling her into the main part of the warehouse.

Standing in front of her is every single workhouse person, even Roy, holding one blank piece of Dunder Mifflin paper (it's sad that she can automatically identify what type of paper it is). When she's been standing there for at least a minute, there's a hubbub until finally, Darryl turns over the first card. Everyone copies him until finally there's a message that spells out: WILL YOU HAVE DINNER WITH ME?

"Have dinner with who?" Pam asks, even though she already knows.

There's a mix of "Temp," and "Fire Guy," and "Ryan," until finally, the man himself comes running through the doors. "Me!" he shouts.

Pam thinks it over for a few seconds and then nods. "Sure, okay."

Ryan arrives at her door holding a single red rose at seven o'clock sharp. She's been waiting for half an hour even though they agreed seven, but she doesn't tell him that. The car ride is filled with endless banter and laughing and he keeps on telling pointless jokes just so he can see her light up. They arrive at the restaurant at exactly sixteen minutes past seven, which is record time for Ryan.

"Reservation under Ryan Howard?" he says to the man at the front desk.

They're taken to their table by a pretty woman with brown hair and red lipstick who smiles at them and says, "You guys are cute together."

"Thanks," they both say in unison.

They start dating a few weeks after that. Everybody in the office has sort of picked up on it without realising, so it's not really a surprise when they announce it one day in front of her desk with their hands joined. It's the small things that define their relationship, really. Like her wearing his sweater to work and him having her perfume in his jacket pocket and the kisses when they arrive at work and when they leave.

When he first tells her that he loves her, it's halfway through December in an unpleasantly warm winter and they're shopping together for Secret Santa gifts. She's trying on a pair of elf ears and he tilts his head at her and casually says, "I love you, you know that?" (She swears, she hears someone gasp).

"I love you too," she says after a while and it's a moment of realisation for them both.

And it's all going really great until Jim in. Ryan loves Pam and Pam loves Ryan and that's the way it is. They're the ones who carpool together and who make a game of stealing each other's things and hiding it in the office and they're the ones who belong together, not Jim and Pam. It sucks because he can't stop it. She doesn't even know it's happening until it's happened and he's just an old photograph in an album that's collecting dust in her cupboard.

She breaks up with him on a Tuesday and her and Jim get together almost immediately after, and it's so stupid that Ryan doesn't hate her. He's back at square one; stealing glances while she answers phones and doodles. Except now Jim's the one that she carpools with and that she kisses with the lights off and that she hugs when she's tired. "Hey," Jim says one day when they're the only ones in the kitchen.

"Hi." It's friendly enough, but Ryan really hopes he doesn't keep talking.

"Hey, dude, I'm really sorry about what I did to get Pam, but... I had no choice," he says and Ryan so wants to punch him.

"Except you did." That's all he says before he leaves Jim alone with his chicken soup.

He has a few flings here and there after that and sometimes he makes out with Kelly when he's having a particularly tough day, but they don't compare to Pam and they'll never be Pam. She's getting married, Dwight informs him one Monday morning and that gives him all the more reasons to hate Mondays.

"Really?" Jim asks one day as he's passing by the annex with some files for Toby.

"What?" Ryan asks, clicking off of his game of FreeCell and onto a blank Word document.

"No congratulations? That's low, dude." Fuck you, Jim Halpert.

"Fuck off, asshole." He actually says that. It's out of his mouth before he can stop it, and oh, shit, Ryan's in for it now.

"I'm not an asshole for being in love," Jim says confidently.

"You're an asshole for stealing my girlfriend," Ryan shoots back just as confidently.

"She's mine now."

"What is she, a fucking lamppost?"

And then Jim grabs Ryan by the scuff of his neck and says, "Stay away from Pam or I'll fucking kill you."

Toby doesn't do anything about it, says he was provoked.

His invite to their wedding comes two weeks late, and it's different to all of the others. It's scrawled in Pam's handwriting and it says something about hoping he can make it because she wants to be his friend. He's too drunk to remember.

The ceremony is beautiful, so he hears. He doesn't know because he turned down Kelly's offer of being her plus one and kindly told Pam that he couldn't go to his ex's wedding because he's still in love with her (she promises that Jim won't find out). She's happy is what Erin tells him and that's enough to make him happy. It doesn't stop him from drowning his sorrows in brownies stuffed with pot and bottles of Sprite with whisky in them.

At some point, Ryan remembers knocking on their door at three in the morning with a bottle of whisky clutched to his chest. "Ryan?" she asks when she opens the door.

"Pam!" he yells, inviting himself in. "Why did you break up with me?"

"Ryan," she says, rubbing her forehead. "Can we not do this tonight?"

"No! Why did you break up with me? We loved each other! I love you." Pam slaps a hand on Ryan's back and pulls him into a hug that she hopes is friendly.

"I don't know. We broke up because that's what happens in life," she says, hoping it's a good enough explanation.

"So, we broke up not because you didn't love me, but because that's life?"

"Ryan."

"Look, Pam, I just want you to be happy but I want you to be happy with me. That's probably really selfish but you don't understand," he slurs.

"Ryan," Pam says comfortingly. "I'm really sorry."

"Pam. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you." He leans in to kiss her, but Jim stops him before he can.

"Fuck you!" he shouts just before his fist connects with Ryan's face, and then mouth, and then nose and then everywhere he can until Ryan's blacked out on the floor.

"Jim!" comes Pam's shout and she lets out a series of strangled gasps.

At work on Monday, Ryan comes in with a black eye and his head down. Kelly rushes to his side and worries far too much about something that's already happened. "Who did this to you?!" she asks desperately, clinging to his arm.

Jim shoots him a warning glance and Ryan shrugs nervously at Kelly. "It doesn't matter, alright? Just leave it," he snaps.

Later, Jim catches him in the break room. "If you tell another living soul, I'll fucking kill you."

"No doubt about it," Ryan says harshly. "Beating me up isn't going to make me stop loving your wife, y'know?"

It actually kind of sucks, though, because Ryan knows that Jim really isn't a bad guy. He was just defending the woman he loves, after all, and Ryan knows that he'd do the same if someone were threatening his relationship with Pam (not that he even has one anymore).

"I know." It's so sincere that Ryan almost feels sorry for the guy. It can't be easy having someone else love your wife.

"I'll see you around."

Sometimes, Ryan has his desk all packed up into boxes and he's ready to hand in his resignation just because he can't stand being there, but he never leaves because it's worth the pain to see her everyday. He pursues Kelly occasionally and it makes him a dick for stringing her along, but he does care about her. Honestly. She always tells him that she loves him and he never says it back because even when he does start to love her back, just a tiny bit, he's hit with the reminder that Pam left him when he said he loved her.

So, no, he never really does get over Pam. Her kids know him as Uncle Ryan and they don't talk about the time when he was her everything and she was his and as far as they're aware, he's in love with their Aunt Kelly, and he's sort of okay with that. He and Jim develop a sort of friendship over the years and the cracks in it slowly dissolve until finally, nobody remembers the time that he beat Ryan to a pulp except the victim himself.

On New Years Day 2017, he kisses her and she convinces herself that it's because it's New Years and it's only polite, and at Christmas 2015, he gives her a scrapbook of their relationship and she convinces herself that it's nostalgia kicking in because the end of the year's coming and on Easter Day 2018, he turns up at her door with baskets full of chocolate eggs and he plays with the kids until dark and she convinces herself that it's an uncle thing, but it isn't and she knows it.

Somewhere along the line, cracks start to show in her and Jim's relationship and she turns to Ryan for comfort, which, granted, probably isn't a great idea, but it's her best so far. She'll call him and they'll talk and there's always this invisible line that they both know they can't cross, and it's alright for once. But after a while, she seeks more comfort in his answering machine than in him, and his message of, "It's Ryan. I can't come to the phone right now, so leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can," becomes more familiar to her than her own voice.

"Ryan," she says one particularly bad day when he's still not picking up. "I know that you're ignoring me, but can you come pick me up? The kids are with my mom and I'm at the Starbucks at the Steamtown Mall. Call me back."

He meets her there and they talk it out and she breaks down crying more often than not.

"I should be with you!" she says, exasperated.

"Yeah, you probably should," he says with a shrug. "But you aren't and you made that choice all those years ago, and I love you, but you have kids to think about. Cece and Philip need a mom more than I need a girlfriend, no matter how much I love you."

He kisses her on the forehead then and advises that they keep their distance. The last thing he heard, her and Jim went to couples counselling and they sorted things out and she's pregnant with their third child, and okay, yeah, that kind of sucks because he still loves her a hell of a lot, but she's happy and so he's happy too because she deserves to be happy. The restaurant they went to on their first date's scheduled to get demolished and it's coming up for ten years since they broke up, and it seems like maybe the restaurant is a metaphor for their relationship. Something that he'll never have again but he'll always cherish, and that's enough for Ryan.

(He does get his happy ending too, if you were wondering. He has a baby with Kelly and they get married and they don't invite Pam or Jim, and she knows that she's second best but at least he loves her too, right?

Also, she's nearing forty and Kelly really needs to settle down, so Ryan's her only hope for love. Even if she isn't his soulmate, that's alright).


End file.
